ENG 4936: "The Real"

This course is a broad-ranging exploration of the ways in which reality has been represented or deployed in a variety of discourses and media. The course will begin with an introduction to the philosophical concept of the real, stretching from Plato to Descartes to Baudrillard. The course will then explore realisms in both painting and literature, mapping the changing notion of realism from the 1850s to the present. The second half of the course will be dedicated to cinematic and televisual strategies for representing reality, beginning with the documentary tradition and continuing on to experimental film, certain forms of narrative cinema, and reality television.